This is lovely! It's like a slightly darker, fruitier Darjeeling, and it doesn't lose any of the subtleties of the first or second flush types. The liquid has a deep, shimmering orange colour, looks wonderful in the sunlight.

This stuff is quickly turning into a new tea addiction. Powerful, and wonderful. It does have the herbal character and the astringency of the classic first or second flush, but also incredible depth which is more reminiscent of Chinese blacks.

A first flush Nilgiri. This must be the first new tea of 2011 that I know of. Grown at about 1300m, the tea has a bright, lemony overtone with lingering taste and spicy aroma. Very fresh tasting. Enjoying it with some Japanese tea treats.

We had a look around and watched them work for a while, and of course had some tea. Yixing Hong Cha, as usual around here this time of year.

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As you can see, despite using a Yixing pot to steep the tea, after it had been filtered it went into a glass pot and from there to be enjoyed from glazed pottery. It's not only Yixing even in Yixing

The Hong Cha was delicious, but not long now until the new greens get out!For next Sunday (20th of March) I made an appointment with Chái Lín Jūn.He is a close friend of my father in law and happens to be a local tea producer. I will see if I can make some pictures all the way from the plucking to the ready made YangXianXueYa. I read in other posts there is some considerable interest in green xue ya, so some of you might enjoy my report about that next week.

Mi-Xiang black that I got from my recent Taiwan trip. It is basically the same tea as oriental beauty with black tea roasting/processing. You can easily taste the same notes as oriental beauty but at the same time some Assam notes. IMO, a very sophisticated black.